Editing Andrew Sarris

{{Short description|American film critic (1928–2012)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2019}}
{{Infobox writer<!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name = Andrew Sarris
| image =
| caption =
| birth_date  = {{birth date|1928|10|31}}
| birth_place = New York City, U.S.
| death_date  = {{death date and age|mf=yes|2012|6|20|1928|10|31}}
| death_place = New York City, U.S.
| occupation  = Film critic
| period      = 1960–2012
| website     =
| education   = [[Columbia University]]
| spouse      = {{marriage|[[Molly Haskell]]|1969}}
}}

'''Andrew Sarris''' (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American [[film criticism|film critic]]. He was a leading proponent of the [[auteur theory]] of film criticism.<ref name=NYT>{{cite news|last=Powell|first=Michael|title=Andrew Sarris, Film Critic, Dies at 83|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/movies/andrew-sarris-film-critic-dies-at-83.html?pagewanted=all|access-date=July 24, 2012|newspaper=The New York Times|date=June 20, 2012}}</ref>

==Early life==
Sarris was born in [[Brooklyn]], [[New York (state)|New York]], to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Katavolos) and George Andrew Sarris, and grew up in [[Ozone Park]], [[Queens]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9XwOAQAAMAAJ&q=George+Themis+Sarris|title=Who's who in Writers, Editors & Poets, United States & Canada|date=May 2, 1995|publisher=December Press|isbn=9780913204306|via=Google Books}}</ref> After attending John Adams High School in [[South Ozone Park]] (where he overlapped with [[Jimmy Breslin]]), he graduated from [[Columbia University]] in 1951 and then served for three years in the [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] [[United States Army Signal Corps|Signal Corps]], during the [[Korean War]], before moving to Paris for a year, where he became a friend of [[Jean-Luc Godard]] and [[François Truffaut]]. Upon returning to New York's [[Lower East Side]], Sarris briefly pursued graduate studies at his alma mater and [[Teachers College, Columbia University]] before turning to film criticism as a vocation.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Andrew Sarris '51, '98 GSAS, Film Critic and Longtime School of the Arts Professor {{!}} Columbia College Today |url=https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/archive/fall12/obituaries1 |access-date=2022-05-14 |website=www.college.columbia.edu}}</ref>

==Career==
After initially writing for ''[[Film Culture]]'', he moved to ''[[The Village Voice]]'' where his first piece—a laudatory review of ''[[Psycho (1960 film)|Psycho]]''—was published in 1960. Later he remembered, "''The Voice'' had all these readers—little old ladies who lived on the West Side, guys who had fought in the Spanish Civil War—and this seemed so regressive to them, to say that [[Hitchcock]] was a great artist". Around this time, he returned to Paris where he was present at the premiere of such [[French New Wave]] films such as [[Truffaut]]'s ''[[Shoot the Piano Player]]'' (1960) and [[Godard]]'s ''[[A Woman Is a Woman]]'' (1961). The experience expanded his view of film criticism: "To show you the dividing line in my thinking, when I did a Top Ten list for ''the Voice'' in 1958, I had a [[Stanley Kramer]] film on the list and I left off both ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' and ''[[Touch of Evil]]''".<ref>Brody, Richard, Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, Henry Holt & Co., 2008, pgs. 212-213</ref> He continued to write film criticism regularly until 2009 for ''[[The New York Observer]]'', and was a professor of film at Columbia University (where he earned an [[Master of Arts|M.A.]] in English in 1998), teaching courses in international film history, American cinema, and Alfred Hitchcock until his retirement in 2011. Sarris was a co-founder of the [[National Society of Film Critics]].

==''Notes on the Auteur Theory''==
Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the [[auteur theory]] in the United States and coining the term in his 1962 essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory," which critics writing in ''[[Cahiers du Cinéma]]'' had inspired.<ref>{{cite journal
 | first = Andrew
 | last = Sarris
 |date=Winter 1962–1963
 | title = Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962
 | journal = Film Culture
 | volume = 27
 | pages = 1–8
 }}</ref> Sarris wrote the highly influential book ''The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968'' (1968), an opinionated assessment of films of the sound era, organized by director. The book would influence many other critics and help raise awareness of the role of the film director and, in particular, of the auteur theory. In ''The American Cinema'', Sarris lists what he termed the "pantheon" of the 14 greatest film directors who had worked in the United States: the Americans [[Robert Flaherty]], [[John Ford]], [[D. W. Griffith]], [[Howard Hawks]], [[Buster Keaton]], and [[Orson Welles]]; the Germans/Austrians [[Fritz Lang]], [[Ernst Lubitsch]], [[F. W. Murnau]], [[Max Ophüls]], and [[Josef von Sternberg]]; the British [[Charles Chaplin]] and [[Alfred Hitchcock]]; and the French [[Jean Renoir]]. He also identified second—and third—tier directors, downplaying the work of [[Billy Wilder]], [[David Lean]], and [[Stanley Kubrick]], among others. In his 1998 book ''You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet: The American Talking Film, History and Memory 1927–1949'', Sarris upgraded the status of [[Billy Wilder]] to pantheon level and apologized for his earlier harsh assessment in ''The American Cinema''.<ref>Andrew Sarris ''You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet: The American Talking Film, History and Memory 1927–1949,'' New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, p.324-34, 328</ref>

For many years, he wrote for both ''[[Rudy Franchi#NY Film Bulletin|NY Film Bulletin]]'' and ''The Village Voice''. During this part of his career, he was often seen as a rival to ''[[The New Yorker]]''{{'}}s [[Pauline Kael]], who had originally attacked the auteur theory in her essay "Circles and Squares."<ref>{{cite journal
 | first = Pauline
 | last = Kael
 |date=Spring 1963
 | title = Circles and Squares
 | journal = Film Quarterly
 | volume = 16
 | issue = 3
 | pages = 12–26
 | jstor = 1210726
 | doi=10.2307/1210726
 }}</ref> Speaking of his long-time critical feuds with Kael, Sarris says that, oddly, "We made each other. We established a dialectic."<ref>[https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/775058/for-the-love-of-movies-the-story-of-american-film-criticism ''For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism''] at the [[Turner Classic Movies|TCM Movie Database]]</ref>

==Legacy==
In 2001, film scholar and critic [[Emanuel Levy]] edited ''Citizen Sarris, American Film Critic: Essays in Honor of Andrew Sarris'', a collection of 39 essays by notable critics ([[Dave Kehr]], [[Todd McCarthy]], [[Gerald Peary]]) and filmmakers ([[Martin Scorsese]], [[John Sayles]], [[Peter Bogdanovich]], [[Curtis Hanson]]) alongside fans of Sarris's works.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2001/book-reviews/sarris_citizen/|title=Personal Memories: A Review of Citizen Sarris – Senses of Cinema|first=Keith|last=Uhlich|date=October 4, 2002 }}</ref>

Film critics such as [[J. Hoberman]],<ref>{{cite news |author=J. Hoberman |url=http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-10-18/specials/get-reel/ |title=Get Reel |work=[[The Village Voice]] |date=October 18, 2005 |access-date=February 23, 2011 |archive-date=December 21, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141221141213/http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-10-18/specials/get-reel/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[Kenneth Turan]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49480 |title=Sight & Sound; Critics On Critics |publisher=BFI |date=March 25, 2010 |access-date=February 23, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110406021124/http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49480/ |archive-date=April 6, 2011 }}</ref> [[Armond White]],<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/issues/winter2004/features/the_critic.php |title=THE CRITIC- Filmmaker Magazine – Winter 2004 |magazine=Filmmaker Magazine |access-date=February 23, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110525234954/http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/issues/winter2004/features/the_critic.php |archive-date=May 25, 2011 }}</ref>
[[Michael Phillips (critic)|Michael Phillips]], and [[A. O. Scott]] have cited him as an influence. His career is discussed in ''[[For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism]]'', first with other critics discussing how he brought the auteur theory from [[French New Wave|France]], and then by Sarris himself explaining how he applied that theory to his original review of Alfred Hitchcock's ''Psycho''. In 1997, [[Camille Paglia]] described Sarris as her third favorite critic, praising "his acute columns during the high period of ''The Village Voice''."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Paglia|first=Camille|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W8JyDwAAQBAJ|title=Provocations: Collected Essays|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group|year=2018|isbn=978-1-5247-4689-6|location=|pages=103|language=en|chapter=The Decline of Film Criticism}}</ref>

==Personal life==
Sarris married fellow film critic [[Molly Haskell]] in 1969; they lived on the [[Upper East Side]] of Manhattan.<ref name=NYT/> He died at [[Mount Sinai Morningside|St. Luke's Hospital]] in Manhattan on June 20, 2012, from an infection developed after a fall.<ref name = NYT/>

Sarris wrote "When people have asked me to name the greatest film of all time—in my humble opinion, of course—my instant answer has been unvarying for the past 30 years or so: [[Max Ophüls]]’ ''[[The Earrings of Madame de…|Madame de]]…'' (1953)." He added that "I usually answer questions about the greatest film of all time by immediate throwing in my own two runners-up: [[Kenji Mizoguchi|Mizoguchi]]'s ''[[Ugetsu|Ugetsu Monogatari]]'' (1953) and [[Jean Renoir|Renoir]]'s ''[[The Rules of the Game|La Règle du Jeu]]'' (1939). Then, if I can grasp the questioner's lapels long enough (much like [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge|Coleridge]]'s crazed [[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner|Ancient Mariner]]), I rattle off the rest off my all-time-ten-greatest-list: [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' (1958), [[John Ford]]'s ''[[The Searchers]]'' (1956), [[Orson Welles|Orson Welles']] ''[[The Magnificent Ambersons (film)|The Magnificent Ambersons]]'' (1942), [[Luis Buñuel]]’s ''[[Belle de Jour (film)|Belle de Jour]]'' (1967), [[F. W. Murnau]]'s ''[[Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans|Sunrise]]'' (1927), [[Charlie Chaplin|Charles Chaplin's]] ''[[Modern Times (film)|Modern Times]]'' (1936) and [[Buster Keaton]]'s ''[[The General (1926 film)|The General]]'' (1927)."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Sarris |first=Andrew |date=March 12, 2007 |title=The Greatest Film Ever Made: Ophüls' Madame de … Is Coming Back to Town |work=[[The New York Observer]] |url=https://observer.com/2007/03/the-greatest-film-of-all-time-ophls-imadame-de-iis-coming-back-to-town/}}</ref>

==Criticism==
Sarris's method of ranking directors in ''The American Cinema'' has been criticized as elitist and subjective. Those who do not make the cut of his 1968 ''Pantheon'' category were sorted under categorical headings listed in the table of contents that descend as follows: ''The Far Side of Paradise''; ''Expressive Esoterica''; ''Fringe Benefits''; ''Less Than Meets The Eye''; ''Lightly Likable''; ''Strained Seriousness''; ''Oddities, One-Shots, and Newcomers''; ''Subjects for Further Research''; ''Make Way for the Clowns!''; ''and Miscellany.''<ref name=autogenerated1>Sarris, Andrew. The American Cinema. New York: Dutton, 1968.</ref>

Criticism of the auteur theory often stems from a misunderstanding of its "dogmatic" nature. Endlessly reviewing and revising his opinions, Sarris defended his original article "Notes on Auteur Theory" in ''The American Cinema'' stating: "the article was written in what I thought was a modest, tentative, experimental manner, it was certainly not intended as the last word on the subject".<ref name=autogenerated1 /> He further stated that the auteur theory should not be considered a theory at all but rather "a collection of facts", and "a reminder of movies to be resurrected, of genres to be redeemed, of directors to be rediscovered."<ref>Sarris, Andrew. Quoted in Kent Jones "Hail the Conquering Hero: Andrew Sarris Profiled." ''Film Comment Magazine Online'' <{{cite web|url=http://www.filmlinc.com/film-comment/article/hail-the-conquering-hero-andrew-sarris-profiled |title=Hail the Conquering Hero: Andrew Sarris profiled &#124; Filmlinc.com &#124; Film Society of Lincoln Center |access-date=October 26, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120405144009/http://www.filmlinc.com/film-comment/article/hail-the-conquering-hero-andrew-sarris-profiled |archive-date=April 5, 2012 }}> Accessed October 25, 2011.</ref>

==Works==
* ''The Films of [[Josef Von Sternberg]]''
* ''The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968''
* Interviews with Film Directors
* ''Confessions of a Cultist''
* ''The Primal Screen''
* ''Politics and Cinema''
* ''The [[John Ford]] Movie Mystery''
* ''You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet: The American Talking Film – History and Memory, 1927–1949''
* ''[[Cahiers du Cinéma]] in English'' (editor) New York: Cahiers Publishing Co., Inc., 1966-
* ''Citizen Sarris: Essays in Honor of Andrew Sarris''. Baltimore: Scarecrow Press, 2000.

==See also==
* [[Experimental film]]
* [[Independent film]]
* [[New Hollywood]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* {{IMDb name}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130508202814/http://andrewsarris.com/ Official website] (archived)
* [https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/andrew-sarris-university-of-washington-talk-march-1987-part-one-2/ Andrew Sarris 1987 lecture]
* {{Charlie Rose guest|48}}
* [https://www.villagevoice.com/author/andrewsarris/ Andrew Sarris] at ''[[The Village Voice]]''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20101210195658/http://arts.columbia.edu:80/film/andrew-sarris Andrew Sarris] at [[Columbia University]]
* [https://observer.com/author/andrew-sarris/ Andrew Sarris] at ''[[The New York Observer]]''
* [http://findingaids.cul.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_6892031/ Andrew Sarris Papers] at Columbia University
* [https://www.mistdriven.com/critics/sarris.html Andrew Sarris Top Ten Lists 1958–2005] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20181228190712/http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/critics/sarris.html archived])
* [https://www.filmcomment.com/article/hail-the-conquering-hero-andrew-sarris-profiled/ Hail the Conquering Hero: Andrew Sarris] by [[Kent Jones (critic)|Kent Jones]]
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/movies/12powe.html A Survivor of Film Criticism’s Heroic Age] at ''[[The New York Times]]''

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[[Category:American film critics]]
[[Category:American people of Greek descent]]
[[Category:Columbia College (New York) alumni]]
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[[Category:Film theorists]]
[[Category:Infectious disease deaths in New York (state)]]
[[Category:John Adams High School (Queens) alumni]]
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[[Category:Military personnel from New York (state)]]
[[Category:People from Ozone Park, Queens]]
[[Category:United States Army personnel of the Korean War]]
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[[Category:Writers from Brooklyn]]